2 Prologue: Cursed with Cruelty 2/5 (2/2)

Date: 6/2/2274

4 and a half years later.

Current event: End of Atomic war, US and China sign a peace treaty, forcing Russia into submission.

By this point, the atmosphere had become extremely polluted, even if nuclear batteries were created, if used in bulk, radiation emission was impossible to control.

Thus, the war that had mainly taken place in the African continent had only used coal and fossil fuels in extreme bulk. This would seem like a pretty dumb idea for the environment, but compared to the effects of nuclear radiation caused by decaying radioactive particles, it was certainly not a large issue. Moreover, with the advances in technology, carbon dioxide was very to breakdown to get the product of carbon and oxygen, both of which were useful.

Apartments had increased worldwide like a wild spread.

Due to the total population coming to a total of 12.5 billion people, the land had long ago become too little space, and as such man had started to build platforms on the ocean. The amount of surface of earth now covered by inhabitable land had increased to over 40%.

Right now, Nero was all alone in his 2-bed apartment.

It was already clear to his neighbors that he was unusual. His father had neglected him up since his birth, not even caring whether his son actually felt anything or not.

He would never talk to him, only answering his questions and leave them unexplained, bring any toys or act like a father, letting him suffer. Or so he thought.

The truth was completely different.

Nero didn't have a single thought or even a concept of suffering. The only human-like quality left in him was curiosity. He still felt pain but never any animosity.

If he felt pain, he would try to understand why he did so. That was what his instincts said. No creature wants to feel pain, their instinct says so.

Nero was oddly tall for his age, being almost 3 feet tall. His eyes were tinted with emerald shades, his sharp jaw hidden by his baby fat on his cheeks. A birthmark could also be spotted on the left of the lower lip. It was small and nothing too noticeable.

What was abnormal about him was almost being able to completely copy someone's movement in a short amount of time, right down to individual facial gestures unknown to even the copied person themselves.

He was able to speak English fluently with articulation similar to that of a politician's speech by the age of 2.

Of course, as he wasn't developed, he couldn't possibly speak as well as an adult.

'what is this?'

'it does things'

'how?'

These were his first thoughts in the English language.

He had already understood the concept of objects and that each has a function, fundamentally speaking.

His comprehension wasn't doubled as one would think because of having double the number of Wernicke's areas, rather because he had double the number neural connections, his ability to perform analysis and memorize had.....

Squared.

The reason behind this was that the brain fired and received signals that were then stored as a neural sequence. So the number of sequences had squared because of the number of neural connections had doubled. If one had three neural fibers that were interconnected together, one could have 7 sequences. If one had 5 neural fibers inter-connected together, the number of sequences possible to store was 21, which is an exponential difference.

Simply put, he was smart.

Very smart.